The science of helping out: 'To help yourself, start by helping others' | Hacker News Reader

The science of helping out: 'To help yourself, start by helping others'

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69 pointsrbanffy29 comments

Having dealt with people in the animal rescue world I think there is another aspect to this. First make sure you are stable and taking care of before you try to help others. I have seen plenty of people who completely neglected their own physical and financial health while helping others. This works for a while but if you don’t take care of yourself eventually others will have to take care of you. I think subconsciously these people believe they are doing good but they can cause a lot of stress to the people around them.

We absolutely saw this happen as we sprinted to make https://findthemasks.com come to life.

After a week or so of burning as hot as we could, we had to take a collective step back to recover and find extra people-power. It took ~3 weeks before we were working sustainably as a volunteer organization.

Also, if you have masks, gowns, sanitizer, wipes, or other PPE lying around your house/business, please visit FTM to find a place to donate. If you know someone who wants local donations of PPE in a health-care setting, please direct them to findthemasks.com to help them, or their institution, request donations.

Thank you! I have a pile of masks I’m looking to donate and was wondering where to bring them. This is fantastic

I agree. Seen this a lot in animal rescue. But not only there.

I use the airline security information as a metaphor for what you described. There one is told to first put the oxygen mask over one's face first before helping others.

If one is unconscious one isn't helpful but instead a burden.

A scene from Baywatch I saw when I was 12 or 13 stayed with me forever. In the scene, a rescue goes bad. Swimmer is unresponsive in the water next to a peer, waves are sloshing, and the swimmer is about to get smashed to bits on the peers.

Rescuer jumps in and tries to save the stranded swimmer. All goes well until the rescuer gets smashed into the peer and injures his back. More rescuers jump in and save the lives of both the swimmer and rescuer.

Then a stark lesson is delivered to the novice lifeguard who got hurt: This is why we train you to use the victim as a cushion agains the peer. They're already hurt and we don't need another victim.

That stuck with me. Rescue yourself first, then help others. Otherwise we just end up with 2 people to rescue.

Your story has an extra dimension - Bravery.

Some people will just jump on the grenade, run into a burning house etc. It's an instinct baked into some small part of the population. No thinking involved.

Helping others day to day doesn't always require bravery (physical strength/low fear of physical danger) or courage (mental/moral strength). Situations where its required (as with the lifeguard) training definitely helps.

True. I think it's important to remember that it's ultimately not your obligation or responsibility to help others, it is a gift. I've found this mental distinction allowed me to create healthy boundaries around my time and resources. It's important to be able to draw the line at how much you're willing to give without feeling guilty.

I've always thought there should be an "other help" movement alongside "self help."

Some of the content could include guidelines for being available while setting firm boundaries, dealing with caregiver fatigue, setting up healthy habits that loop another person without annoying them.

I would love to offer a couch to a friend in need, if I knew I could count on them not to abuse it, that they'd make steady progress, and that there's a deadline for when we get our lives back to normal. Unfortunately whenever I do try to help out it usually ends up enabling continuing the problematic behavior.

> I would love to offer a couch to a friend in need, if I knew I could count on them not to abuse it, that they'd make steady progress, and that there's a deadline for when we get our lives back to normal. Unfortunately whenever I do try to help out it usually ends up enabling continuing the problematic behavior.

This sounds like the individualized perception of the issues with a government welfare system. ;)

Very good idea on the "other help" movement though.

Are you implying those perceived issues do not really exist?

No, I'm implying they are very obvious when considered at an individual level.

> I've always thought there should be an "other help" movement alongside "self help."

There is, one of the communities I happen to know about is called the effective altruism community. I'm sure it's not the only one, and I'm pretty sure there are more communities with the word "altruism" in it that are about the idea of other help.

I do think it's an amazingly marketable term though since it juxtaposes to self help so well.

Otoh, if someone is stuck in the water, a life preserver being thrown at them isn’t going to make them dependent on life preservers. But they must address the reason why they were in the water in the first place.

Key graf:

“One of the best things you can do is call someone else facing a similar problem and talk them through it. When you talk other people through their problems, you come up with wiser perspectives and solutions for yourself.” Adam Grant, author of "Give and Take"

One of the most infuriating realizations is that we end up giving the advice that we ourselves need.

One thing I remember form working on a crisis line was some people were definitely there because they had their own issues. That didn’t make them bad on the phone (AFAIK — we didn’t listen in on others’s calls but we did discuss them afterwards).

I have been told that quite a few people get into clinical psychiatry or psychology with the hope it will help them with their own issues.

To me, that seems like a case of: people get most fascinated with what hits closest to home. And whatever you experience yourself qualifies for that.

That doesn’t necessarily make you a good candidate for a crisis line btw. E.g. if you have had suicidal thoughts in the past,mor lost a sibling that way, you might have difficulty when that comes up on the phone.

When I was a kid, all I did was give. I gave until I had nothing left to give. When my mother found out about it, she would always yell at me and ask, "what about you? How are you going to survive without X?" Truth is, I never thought about the consequences. I just knew that if I gave someone something they needed, that was all that mattered. And it felt good. I'm 29 now and my mother is late. Things are different. I am the most selfish person I know. I always give less than I want to give. Sometimes, I just outright say NO. But that's because I am trying to build a life for myself. I am saving for marriage, a house and my business; so I hardly have anything to give anyway. I always tell myself, I will help out more once I am all settled but I don't really believe it deep down. And it feels good.

This reads like Ayn Rand Fanfic.

In particular, I can't think of anything a child could give away that would fit the "X" in "How are you going to survive without X?"

I also doubt that anyone would remember their actions as a child in such terms. A child doesn't decide to altruistically give away their stuff. It does so because it is in their nature. And as with anything that comes naturally, you are unlikely to form explicit memories of such actions.

What's the point of this comment? To cast doubt on the personal experience that was shared by another person?

This may sound like an alien situation to you, but I assure you parent is not the only person who's been through this archetype character development.

I have a hard time taking feel good social science results at face value after the replication crisis.

The entire field needs to be torn down and built back up on a better foundation.

Please remember to put on YOUR air mask FIRST, before helping children or other people.

thanks. Now I know I am not alone in using this metaphor.

In my life experience, many Americans tend to be selfish individualists and fail to reciprocate or be concerned about anyone else. For example, a donation barrel at a local hackerspace one recent holiday season was essentially empty. Inequality is also rampant as thousands of homeless people live on highway embankments while millionaires drive past in Ferraris.

In areas without community social ramifications (typically large cities), there's little benefit of helping and minimal risks of not helping others. OTOH, there are bigger risks of not being helpful in rural areas where there might be one general store run by one person and where reputation gossip gets around.

While I agree on the inequality, the US does have the highest charitable donations per capita of all countries worldwide by quite a margin [1], which seems to be a good measure of generosity. Although the counterpoint to this might be that said charity is only necessary because of the effects of a kind of systemic selfishness? (I don't know this subject matter very well; more informed perspectives very welcome)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitabl...

I wonder how much of that, though, is tithing or other support of religious institutions. I'm not sure how to tease these apart, but Creflo Dollar and Opus Dei seem like they should be in a different category from Oxfam and street beggars.

Yeah, you're right.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/758803/Oxfam-scandal-sex-a...

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/918425/OXFAM-SCANDAL-chari...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2641108/Former-head...

https://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/about-us/plans-reports-a...

That's all well-and-good meaningless virtue signaling, but it doesn't give millions of homeless people homes, a decent standard of living to people working for poverty wages, those tens of millions people who have dropped out of the workforce (participation rate) good jobs, tens of millions universal healthcare, or the hundred/s of millions savings for a path to ever retire. So don't talk to me about the "generosity" of Americans.

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